From Santiago to San Pedro...

..is 25 hours on a bus.

Sort of like the Paul Kelly song, only in Spanish with more dry ham rolls...when in Chile, catch Tur Bus - you'll know what I mean.

So we're in San Pedro de Atacama at the moment. You'll get no photos because I don't know how to say "USB Port" in Spanish and I can't see one.

Our flight from Brisbane sort of sucked - no more then any other plane, I guess, but 15 hours in one hit is not that comfortable. K's little TV got stuck on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game and the cranky Chileno hostie couldn't fix it - I don't think she really tried.

A tip - if you take the flight get a seat on the right hand side of the plane because you'll get a cool view of the Andes on the way in.

Santiago was big and busy, but we made it to the hostel in one piece. Easy really, the Metro is pretty good. The señorita at the hostel was really friendly - she told us in a really nice way that we couldn't stay because she'd double booked.

There was a brief moment of panic - but it turned out that they had another, flasher hotel in a better spot. It was more exy, but they gave it to us for the cheaper price. Hot water, cable, breakfast, a flash room you'd pay well over $100 in Oz - was 33.000 CHP - about $60.

We had a bit of a wander around Barrio Bellavista, found a little square called Patio del Bellavista where we had dinner, Pisco sour and beers. Walked around the corner and found a little bar with a jukebox playing Rammstein.

Very traditional.

I tried my "Dos cervesas, por favor" and the guy brought out two giant tallies of Heineken - about a jug each, really. So we gave one back and he just chuckled.

Proximo dia, we caught a bus to Antofagasta.

19 hours.

Heaps fun.

Antofagasta was a weird sort of place. Not a really friendly place, but we did find a coffee shop serving actual espresso.

Another tip - no such thing as a flat white, just get a black coffee and deal with it. And if you order a "cafe capucino", as K did, they'll give you sort of a hot iced coffee with a big stack of whipped cream on the top.

Another 4 hours on a bus to Calama - a mining town in the middle of the desert. It reminded me of Katherine for some reason.

We just hung out at the bus terminal, then got on our way to San Pedro.

Which is really cool.

It's smack in the middle of the Atacama Desert - which is a real desert. There was a good few hundred k's where there was just rock and sand and us - nothing else, not even cactus or desert grassy stuff.

The bus sort of dropped us off on the side of road, which was disconcerting for a second, but we found a reasonable place to stay very easily.

We then had our first showers for two days, and K took full advantage of the hot water in the Hotel Tambillo. And then I took full advantage of the 30 seconds of hot water left after she finished.

We headed out to dinner and found a really cute little place and had fantastic food. K had a steak with mushrooms and potato - sounds exciting, I know, but it was sort of the traditional food of the area and it was bloody good. I had a steak sandwich with goat's cheese. A steak sandwich?

Yep. By that, I mean they had two small eye fillets sort of baked, with this goats cheese in between. With this super tasty sort of mashed potato thing with a basil based sauce on top.

We had some Chilean wine with dinner - Castilleno del Diablo. A cab sav, and one of the best we've had for ages - not that we're expert, but, again, bloody tops.

Incidentally, Chilenos believe removing the balls from animals is immoral, so there a literally dogs everywhere, and something else I thought mangoman would find interesting - this includes beasts.
So the steak you get is all from young bulls. Would make for an exciting cattle property, I guess.

Anyway, our time's almost up, so we're going to go hav a couple of Escudos as we sit by the plaza.

Salud!